Tenacity, Perseverance, and Imagination in the ‘Private International Prosecution’ of Hissène Habré

This chapter focuses on Human Rights Watch’s strategy, challenges, the role played by civil society, and the strokes of fate that accompanied the twenty-year effort to convict Hissène Habré. The Habré trial was the fruit of what has been called ‘one of the world's most patient and tenacious campaigns for justice’. This campaign was waged over two decades by Habré's victims and their supporters, who improbably succeeded in creating the political conditions to bring a former African president to justice in Africa, with the support of the African Union. The victims' coalition ‘essentially served the case to the EAC on a silver platter’, determining the contours of the prosecution and dictating the nature of the trial itself, thereby contributing to its emancipatory impact. Ultimately, the Habré case shows how a ‘private international prosecution’ can allow victims to achieve criminal justice on their own terms.

The Common People and Material Relics of Antiquity the Afterlife of Ancient Coins in the Territory of Present-Day Poland in the Medieval and Modern Periods

Ancient coinage, almost exclusively Roman denarii from the 1st or 2nd century AD, constitutes a small percentage of hoards and other assemblages dated (with the latest coins present) to either the Middle Ages or to the modern period in the territory of present-day Poland. Such finds can be seen as strongly indicating that ancient coinage did function as means of payment at that time. This hypothesis is further supported by written sources. Moreover, ancient coins have also been recorded at other sites in medieval and modern period contexts e.g. in burial sites, which are less easy to interpret than hoards. Finds often include pierced coins and others showing suspension loops, which suggests they may have been used as amulets, jewellery or devotional medals. Other finds, such as Roman coins placed in alms boxes in modern period churches in Silesia, also point to a religious context. At the same time, written sources attest that at least since the Late Middle Ages, Roman denarii were known to common people as ‘St John’s pennies’. The name is associated with a Christian interpretation of the image of the emperor’s head on the coin, resembling that of John the Baptist on a silver platter.

Death on a Silver Platter

Around six o’clock on the evening of September 22, 1943, John F. Noxon Jr., a prominent attorney in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and a “crippled” polio survivor, telephoned his family’s pediatrician to come at once. His six-month-old son, Lawrence, who had Down syndrome, had apparently entangled himself in wires and had received a terrible electrical shock. When the doctor arrived, he found the dead “mongoloid” baby dressed in a wet diaper, lying on a silver platter. A few days later authorities arrested “crippled” Noxon for the murder of “mongoloid” Lawrence. For the next five years, the citizens of Massachusetts and the nation followed in their newspapers the trials, verdict, death sentence, appeals, pardon, and parole of this “mercy killing.” The Noxon murder trials of 1944 highlighted the interconnections of disabilities, masculinity, and “mercy killing” in World War II North America.